Using smooth, long lines and curves, bold colors and often an imagined back story for the forms in his work, artist Taylor A. Moore paints faces, figures and even abstracts that surface in his mind while listening to music.
"I surprise myself when I paint because I'm never painting someone specific," Moore reveals. "Listening to the music, that gives me the atmosphere to paint, which reflects how that person is, because it's their story behind them. In seeing it, you'll instantly know if they're happy or if they're sad or if they're in love or if they're at their wit's end, and I want to get the point across very suddenly so then you can sit there and really enjoy the atmosphere of the painting."
FAQ
Artist Taylor A. Moore
WHEN — Through October; artist reception 5-8 p.m. Wednesday
WHERE — DeVito’s Restaurant, Eureka Springs
COST — Reception free and open to public
INFO — 253-6807, http://devitoseurek…">devitoseureka.com
A classically trained opera singer and jazz enthusiast, Moore grew up in a family of artists and has been expressing himself visually from a very young age. When music came into the picture, Moore was able to draw from that mental imagery -- of being on the stage, under heavy lights of reds and greens -- and relate that ambiance to his depictions.
"When I paint, I imagine these figures in a jazz bar -- I love the atmosphere of a smoky jazz bar: dark, piano on stage with stage lights, one singer sitting on a chair singing, even to an empty room," Moore reflects. "In music, they call them torch songs -- Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald did a lot of them -- and they're songs where [usually] a woman will stand on a stage and give a performance and [it] isn't to anybody specific, it's basically like they're singing to themselves. So I call my paintings torch paintings because it's like a person singing a song in one moment of time, like in a story of a play or production of something."
It's not a smoke-filled club, but DeVito's Restaurant in Eureka Springs will host an exhibition of Moore's work through the end of October and the artist says the European feel of not just DeVito's but of all of Eureka Springs is a nice fit for his work.
"It's a really beautiful place and the antique-ness of Eureka Springs -- with cobblestone streets and dark color palettes and amber lighting, which I love -- it's perfect for my work, really."
-- Jocelyn Murphy
NAN What's Up on 08/11/2017